August, 2009 archive

that almost no one (spellcheck won’t find missing words) looks at after the first visit.

Usually the tinkering takes the form of adding or removing a plugin (like that “Deep Tho’ts from John Handey” thingee that every once in a while rolls over and plays dead) or changing the order of stuff (as when I moved the “Search” window higher, which I did because I use it frequently to make sure I’m not repeating myself or to remind myself of exactly what I might have driveled on about in the past).

Some while ago, I gave the blogroll a major trim and restyling, reflecting more my changing interests since I first set it up than anything about who might have been removed from it. I tried to do two things: cut it down to a manageable length and reduce the number of big, well-known sites that most folks are likely to have bookmarked anyway, unless they were sites that I regularly visit myself.

Today I added a new link to the Blogroll. I wouldn’t usually mention that, except that this blog is particularly creative.

Traditional Medicare has been a success, fiscally and morally. It took on the job of insuring health coverage and care to people that private insurance had abandoned. Since 2003, on the other hand, private Medicare plans have cost tens of billions of dollars that have gone to support the private insurance industry, not to providing health care. In addition, private Medicare plans have too often engaged in marketing abuses and restrictive coverage practices.

I was looking for a defunct website at the Internet Archive and stumbled across a place that had squatted on the name of the site.

That page redirected to one of those fraudulent sites that pretends to scan your computer for malware so it can trick you into buying their anti-malware product. Most of the time, their product is actually more malware.

I clicked “Cancel” scan and it pretended to scan anyway while popups cascaded. One give away was that the phony scan’s progess bar moved faster than a scan from a local disk would have allowed, let alone a scan over the net (and I have used internet AV scans from reputable vendors such as Trend Micro and Symantec. It then told me that I had oodles of trojans, viruses, and other assorted baddies on my C:\ and D:\ drives.

This box runs Ubuntu Linux with Fluxbox. I don’t have C:\ and D:\ drives; I have sda1* (a very small boot drive) and sda3* (everything else). I don’t have a “My Documents” folder.

A total of 416 banks with combined assets of $299.8 billion failed the FDIC’s grading system for asset quality, liquidity and earnings in the second quarter, the most since June 1994, the Washington-based FDIC said in a report today. Regulators didn’t identify companies deemed “problem” banks.

It contains no private information. It does not drop persistent cookies, does not collect data other than incoming ip addresses and page views (the internet is a public place), and certainly does not collect and sell your information to others.

Some sites that I link to may try to track you, but that's between you and them, not you and me.

I do collect statistics, but I use a simple stand-alone Wordpress plugin, not third-party services such as Google Analitics over which I have no control.

Finally, this is website is a hobby. It's a hobby in which I am deeply invested, about which I care deeply, and which has enabled me to learn a lot about computers and computing, but it is still ultimately an avocation, not a vocation; it is certainly not a money-making enterprise (unless you click the "Donate" button--go ahead, you can be the first!).

I appreciate your visiting this site, and I desire not to violate your trust.

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